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rhoelle 's review for:
The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire
by Kyle Harper
This book has an interesting topic -- I'm particularly interested in the Antonine Plague -- and it has some useful things to say, but I had a lot of trouble with the writing style. There are so, so many bland, introductory-type or sweeping statements that it started to drive me crazy. Just get to the meat of the information please and leave the grand pronouncements on the cutting room floor. I bet this book could have been a lot shorter and yet a lot better.
The other thing is that the reader for this audio book seemed to mispronounce virtually every Latin name and term. He didn't stop at Latin either. Inundate is a common enough word, right? It's pronounced /ˈinənˌdāt/. See, that second syllable is a schwa and so it's unaccented. But he would repeatedly somehow find the word "nun" in the middle of that word and accent it for all it was worth. There were other long words where this happened as well. I'm reminded of the question, does everyone have to do everything? If one doesn't know or want to know how to pronounce words properly, why become a reader? I started to think he was upset about something and deliberately trying to sabotage the audiobook.
Anyway, while I did find it very interesting to learn about how the heights of Romans changed, how the plague progressed and similar such topics, I think a rewrite might be in order, and a re-recording. It might also be good to split the nebulous topic into two books, one about disease, the other about climate so that the book could focus more instead of meandering about.
The other thing is that the reader for this audio book seemed to mispronounce virtually every Latin name and term. He didn't stop at Latin either. Inundate is a common enough word, right? It's pronounced /ˈinənˌdāt/. See, that second syllable is a schwa and so it's unaccented. But he would repeatedly somehow find the word "nun" in the middle of that word and accent it for all it was worth. There were other long words where this happened as well. I'm reminded of the question, does everyone have to do everything? If one doesn't know or want to know how to pronounce words properly, why become a reader? I started to think he was upset about something and deliberately trying to sabotage the audiobook.
Anyway, while I did find it very interesting to learn about how the heights of Romans changed, how the plague progressed and similar such topics, I think a rewrite might be in order, and a re-recording. It might also be good to split the nebulous topic into two books, one about disease, the other about climate so that the book could focus more instead of meandering about.